


You Are the Bluest Light

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Mental Health Issues, carnival date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: “That’s basically impossible.” Goten sighs and reaches out to touch his face. “You worry about me and I worry about you.  Mutual worry.  And, like, caring and junk.”Trunks arches his brows.“Nice sentiment.  You should put it on a greeting card.”





	You Are the Bluest Light

**Author's Note:**

> a follow-up to [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12807888)

When Goten wakes up and sees the bed is empty, he simply assumes Trunks went to work and lies back down.  His eyes slip shut and he remembers how, last night, he said that he was taking a day off, too, and then he feels pissed.  It wouldn’t be the first time Trunks would forget a promise but somehow this one stings especially hard.  They had had that entire conversation about Goten being depressed and he still just takes off to work on his dumb vegetables.

He knows that he probably won’t get back to sleep so he throws the comforter off and trudges into the kitchen.  He feels the pulse of energy before the door opens and--he really should stop underestimating his boyfriend.  Trunks stands in front of him holding a cardboard carrying container with two coffees and a paper bag.

“I have bagels!” he calls loudly and then, upon noticing Goten, starts speaking at a normal level, “Oh, you’re right here.  I have bagels.”

He holds up the bag and Goten smiles.  Trunks  _ can _ be remarkably selfish but he should know by now that it’s never when it counts.

“Take the coffees,” he says. “Large iced latte with two shots of vanilla swirl--which makes my teeth hurt just saying that, by the way.”

Goten takes the cardboard carrier and shakes his head with laughter.  Trunks always teases him about how sweet he takes his coffee.

“What did you get?” he asks.  The other clear up looks to be similarly light-colored and frothy as Goten’s.

“Since I’ve been doing nothing but basically taking espresso intravenously at work, I got an iced coffee with milk and sugar for a break.”

He nods, glad for it.  Trunks has a tendency to disregard his health, especially when he’s been working.

“And the bagels?” he asks.  Goten sniffs at the bag, already hungry.

“An onion bagel with habanero cream cheese,” he reports.

Trunks reaches into the bag and produces the wrapped bagel.  Goten takes it, unwrapping it and taking a massive first bite.  He crunches the peppers mixed in with the cheese between his teeth and washes it down with a sip of his coffee.  He can already smell Trunks’s bagel in the bag.

“Sesame bagel with lox cream cheese,” he says, “and two side orders of smoked salmon.”

He cringes.  Of course.

“Brush your teeth before you kiss me.  You always taste like lowtide.”

Trunks scoffs and makes a sweeping gesture away from himself.

“Shows what you know.  Salmon’s freshwater.”

He rolls his eyes and Trunks responds by bumping him with his shoulder.

“How are you doing, by the way?”

Trunks takes his coffee and puts his lips on the straw, watching him as he asks.  Goten shrugs.  He doesn’t feel bad--it isn’t a present sadness--but he doesn’t feel particularly great either.  The bagels and coffee also aren’t enough of a breakfast for either of them but he knows Trunks.  He probably has brunch planned, and lunch, in addition to whatever else.

“Hey,” Goten says after a moment. “Last night you said you were going to wake me up with morning sex.”

“I was going to but you looked like you wanted to sleep some more so I just went got the bagels.” Trunks punctuates his sandwich by using his fingers to shove an incredible amount of smoked salmon in his mouth.

He’s a little disappointed but, truthfully, he feels a bit greedy for it after last night.  They had had sex again after whatever movie they had been watching ended.

“So what are we doing today?”

Trunks’s answer is to grin around the straw of his coffee cup.

\--

At the boardwalk it’s hot but the sun is bandaged in clouds.  Trunks takes his hand and leads him through the crowds.  Everyone is everywhere: street performers and tourists and people out enjoying the weather.  To their right, the ocean surges onto the yellow sand.  It reminds him of the game he and Trunks would play when they were children.  They would stand on the dark, damp sand and wait for the waves to creep towards them.  At the last minute, they’d run away, screeching with laughter and trying to keep the water from lapping at their feet.

Out here, in the crowds of the boardwalk, he and Trunks are just like everyone else.  They’re a couple enjoying a nice day out.  They aren’t the sons of physical gods, Trunks isn’t the heir to a long dead race, neither of them helped to save the world when they were children.  It’s strange, thinking about it and the peace they have now.  It makes Goten feel guilty for being depressed again and he tries to shake it off.

They walk by a man playing guitar in front of a t-shirt shop and Trunks grabs Goten’s hand.  He swings their joined arms together and starts singing along, loud and off-key.

“Oh, oh, it’s magic!  When I’m with youuuu.”

Goten laughs and puts a hand over his mouth.

“Sorry,” he tells the musician. “You’re very good.”

Trunks drops a few hundred zenie in the man’s open, beckoning case and the musician stops singing, eyes wide.

“For real?  Holy shit, dude.”

They walk away and Goten frowns at him.  There’s something about Trunks that seems off.

“Are  _ you _ okay?” he asks.

Trunks grins and leans against him.

“This manic moment,” he croons and--that’s it.

They make quite the pair, don’t they?  Goten sighs.

“Don’t worry,” he assures him. “I’m fine.  Just a bit...y’know.”

He does know.  Trunks has been cooped up in the lab for days, feverishly working, and his body doesn’t know how to adjust.

“Trunks…”

“This is for us both, remember?” He tilts his face up to the sun. “Shit, this feels good.”

Goten watches him warily and, when he lowers his head, he flashes a confident smile.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“That’s basically impossible.” Goten sighs and reaches out to touch his face. “You worry about me and I worry about you.  Mutual worry.  And, like, caring and junk.”

Trunks arches his brows.

“Nice sentiment.  You should put it on a greeting card.”

“I’m being serious.”

Trunks leans in and presses their foreheads together.  Goten instinctively closes his eyes at the touch.

“I’m not here for serious.  But it’s okay.   _ I’m _ okay.  Let’s just have a good day.”

He feels like there’s more to it, but he doesn’t say anything.  Not yet.  Trunks is right about one thing: this is a good day for themselves.  He should enjoy it.

Trunks buys them both ice cream--chocolate for him, strawberry for Goten--and Goten licks his cone contemplatively, watching his boyfriend’s profile.  He feels oddly locked out of what’s going on in Trunks’s head and that’s new territory.  Even as kids, even before they were one person, he’s always sort of known what he was thinking or what he was feeling.  The feeling only grew stronger after they had learned fusion.  When Trunks snuck into the gravity room by himself and ended up breaking his arm, Goten felt sharp, shooting pain up and down his own arm all the way at his own house.  When he was home sick with the flu, Trunks said he felt feverish and achey even though the thermometer said his temperature was fine.  Not knowing what Trunks is feeling makes him feel disjointed and more outside himself than he already did.

His ice cream melts in pink rivers down his hand and he tries to lick it before it completely turns to liquid.

“Is it the vegetables?” Goten asks.

Trunks looks up from his cone and there’s a big of ice cream on the tip of his nose.

“The what?”

“Your vegetables.  The super ones or whatever you were trying to do.  Is it not going well?”

He shakes his head.

“No, no.  They’re going fine.”

Goten squints at him and bites into his ice cream cone.

“Then what’s wrong?  And not  _ just _ brain shit, okay?  Something’s bugging you.”

Trunks sighs.  Wipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

“Come on.”

As always, he leads and Goten follows, this time to the ferris wheel.  He dumps the remainder of his ice cream cone in the trash as they queue up to enter one of the closed gondolas.  He doesn’t know when Trunks got tickets for any of the rides but, like most things, he doesn’t question it.  Trunks is a Briefs.  They just have access to things.

Ferris Wheels aren’t exactly captivating when you’ve been able to fly since you were seven but Goten knows that they’re not in here for the sights.

“What’s up?”

Trunks slumps in the seat and gazes past him out the window as the gondola begins its rotation upwards.

“I was going to mention it last night but then I came home and found you in the shower and.  Well, that took precedence.”

Goten crosses the gondola and sits next to him.

“What happened?”

He reaches out to stroke Trunks’s hair between his fingers.  His own hair is thick and coarse but Trunks’s has always felt like silk or something else fine and exquisite.

“The other me stopped by,” he says and.  That isn’t what he was expecting at all.

“The one from the future?”

He nods.

“Yeah.  His fashion sense has gotten worse, by the way.  A leather duster that has this hideous brown fur collar.” He laughs. “Anyway, he came to see me and apparently he’s in this patrol thing to make up for his time crimes.  Which, like, I thought having his entire universe erased was penance but what do I know?”

Trunks sighs and rests his head on the smudged glass surrounding them.

“And they let him just visit you?”

“Who knows?  But he did.  Anyway, he wanted to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Goten strokes a hand down his face and then drops it to clasp Trunks’s hand in his.

“He met another you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  They’re both in that time patrol bullshit whatever and, anyway, they fell in love because--duh.” Trunks laughs. “Who wouldn’t fall in love with you?”

Goten smiles and brings their heads together.  The ferris wheel pauses at the top but neither of them turn to look at the view spread beneath them.

“They’re married.  And I thought: shit.  That clusterfuck of the other me can get it together and, like, what are we doing?”

So that’s it.  Trunks is comparing himself to the other him again.  He’s heard it over the years: he’s not strong enough or good enough.  He’s too loud, too rough.  He’s not at all like the heroic symbol of hope that’s his counterpart.  Goten squeezes his hand supportively.

“We’re doing us,” he says. “Like, c’mon.  The other you has never known peace or rest, right?  He sees someone he’s in love with and he jumps on it because he thinks he’ll lose it or, like, die.  We’re  _ able  _ to wait because our lives aren’t a constant struggle.  We’re lucky.”

He thinks it sounds alright.  It gets a small smile out of Trunks anyway.  He kisses him as the ferris wheel begins its descent.  Goten kisses back, threading his fingers into that fine, fine hair.  He feels Trunks’s hand snake towards his front and cup his crotch.  Reflexively, he twitches into his hand.  Goten knows that their ride on the ferris wheel is almost over and, more than that, they’re sitting in what basically amounts to a glass dome.  Someone can see them.

He doesn’t care.

It isn’t whatever words of comfort he said or Trunks’s insecurities when it comes to his future counterpart.  It’s their day off, it’s the heat and the ice cream and everything.  None of these are good reasons to be fooling around in a ferris wheel gondola like a couple of teenagers, but he doesn’t care.  He feels better than he has in days, curled around his boyfriend and making out furiously.  Trunks’s hand is now under his waistband, inching lower.

“Marry me.”

Goten pulls back. “Why?”

Trunks retracts his hand. “Why?  Because I love you?”

“But why now?”

He knows why and Trunks knows why but neither says it.  He suddenly feels worse.  The ferris wheel comes to a stop and the attendant opens it.  Goten walks out, alone, miserable.  He walks towards the beach and Trunks doesn’t follow.

\--

He stays out on the beach until it’s dark and the sand is cold under him and everyone has left.  He watches the waves go in and out and thinks it might be some kind of metaphor for his entire life but can’t quite place why.

He’s the son of the savior of the universe and younger brother to the  _ other _ savior of the universe.  And he’s just Goten.  Goten who has a reason to be sad now, he figures, because his boyfriend proposed because he’s in an imagined pissing contest with his alternate self.  At least it’s better than “simply” being depressed.  Hooray.

Shit.

He wishes they were past this, that he was past this.  He  _ knew _ today wasn’t going to fix everything and that there’s a future conversation down the line to be had but now he feels worse.

Goten feels a pulse of ki behind him and he closes his eyes.  It’s been hours, he’s hungry and he has sand in his pants, but he doesn’t move.  He lets Trunks sit next to him.

“You know, my dad lied.”

A distraction.  Goten picks up the thread.

“Did he now?”

“Remember before he died?  How he said he never held me or whatever?”

“I guess.”

How can he forget?  Waking up to the news later: his brother and Trunks’s dad were dead.  This was real, they were gone, the world was ending and he had to help save it.  A lot of pressure to put on a seven-year-old.

“That was a lie.  He did before, when I almost drowned.  Right about...there.” Trunks gestures down the shoreline.

“Tell me.”

He hasn’t heard this story before, which feels weird.

“I was maybe five and we went to the beach.  My mom made a big deal about it because it was the first time my dad came with us willingly.  Anyway.  I kept throwing myself into the waves like the hellion I was.”

“Am.”

Trunks nudges him with his shoulder and smiles gently.  The moon has risen and it casts a pearly light over his face, making him look otherworldly and beautiful.

“Right.  So I’d do that and run back yelling ‘did you see?’ over and over again and anyway, I guess a wave got me and I remember...breathing sand, almost, and all the waves crashing over me and tossing me around.” He looks out at the waves and shudders as if the memory is fresh. “And then I was lifted up, but not by the wave.  By my dad.”

By the time his dad came around, Goten could already swim.  Gohan taught him and first he was so scared but soon he took to it like a fish.  His mom had to come and drag him out of the lake when it was time to come in.  He doesn’t mention this to Trunks.

“He carried me back to our towels and my mom fussed on me and shit.”

Goten watches the waves.  The tide is coming in, he thinks, and soon he’ll have to move.  Maybe.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “About springing it on you like that.  I guess I still feel threatened by him.”

“Do you want to?” Goten asks. “Like, really.  Do you want to get married?”

The moonlight makes his eyes look phosphorescent and it’s hard to look directly at him.

“Eventually,” he says, “but you’re right.  There’s no rush.”

They settle against one another and Goten feels a weight lifted off of his chest.

“I didn’t want to ruin our day,” Trunks says. “You have tomorrow off, too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Tomorrow we’ll stay in bed.” He presses his lips against his temple.

He can’t help it. “And plan our wedding.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Trunks’s hand snakes forward to link their fingers together.  A smile teases on his lips.

“Yeah.  We have plenty of time to find a color scheme that doesn’t clash with your hair.”

“Ouch.”

And just like that, they’re back to normal.  Maybe it’s because he knows what Trunks is feeling or what goes on in that busy head of his.  Maybe it’s what being in an adult relationship is.  Maybe, maybe, a lot of maybes.  He doesn’t mind.  A lot isn’t settled, but it’s nothing that can be fixed in a day and maybe can’t be fixed at all.  He doesn’t mind that either.  They don’t have to be perfect but they’re better together--he knows it.

“I love you,” Trunks says.

“I love you, too.”

“Mm,” he murmurs and rests his head against Goten’s. “I like when we’re cheesy.”

He gives a small smile, watches the waves.

“Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
